Gothic 3 - Review @ Game Helper

January 12th, 2007, 17:13

Game Helper has reviewed Gothic III and the review is now placed in the "OUCH" column with a paltry 2.3/10.00 score.

Eventually I try my hand at altering the .ini file, which controls the games resources and whatnot. I go online and find some troubleshooting hints and they help for a while, but the next night Iím still unable to play the game, with it stuttering itself to non existence at the low graphical settings. If my computer canít run a game, it canít run a game, this is the curse of PC gaming, but my computer should have been able to run this game! Memory leaks causing too many instances of desktop crashing is not a feature listed on the back of the box, but it should have been.
I apologize for this not being a review in the tradition of Gamehelper, but this sums up my playing experience of Gothic 3, 10 hours of total time, three nights wasted, all for about an hour and a half of game time. The rest was spent tweaking the files the game runs from. Iím not a programmer; I donít know why I spent so much time reprogramming this game. Gothic 3 does not work right out of the box, it takes far too much tweaking, and there are too many other games for consumers to put up with this crap.

The demo ran for me and my system is below the min specs. It wasn't really playable. I was fine walking around, but I lost more then one combat due to system lag. Frustrating, but I can't complain, as I said I was below the min. But I can see why someone'd hate the game if it didn't run especially if they had a rig that should be fine.

I might take issue with the statement "…there are too many other games for consumers to put up with this crap." That is assuming those games are worthwhile. From what I saw of G3 I'm sad I'm missing it.

But from the reviews and comments I've seen the game does need some serious patching love.

I can, to a certain degree, understand why the author of that article was so frustrated with the technical aspects of G3.
I think in such a case it would have been better to give no rating at all and to state that this is due to the fact that the reviewer wasn&#180;t able to get the game run stable.
Most people will now just look at the score and see 2.3 out of 10 and think to themselves "Oh my, this game must be horrible weak in terms of content!" (story, controls, graphics, music, atmosphere, interface and so on…) and that&#180;s just not right.

Originally Posted by Pfandpirat
I can, to a certain degree, understand why the author of that article was so frustrated with the technical aspects of G3.
I think in such a case it would have been better to give no rating at all and to state that this is due to the fact that the reviewer wasnīt able to get the game run stable.
Most people will now just look at the score and see 2.3 out of 10 and think to themselves "Oh my, this game must be horrible weak in terms of content!" (story, controls, graphics, music, atmosphere, interface and so on…) and thatīs just not right.

If I couldn't get past ~1 hour out of a 100+ hour game, then there are two possibilities:
- A 0/10 "this piece of crap is too buggy to be considered a playable game' - which would need to be accompanied by similar results on more than one system.
- A DNR - did not review - assessing the game as basically unplayable but not assigning a score since <1% of the game had been played.

This "reviewer" doesn't deserve to be listed, just consider some points of his unprofessional confessional.

1. He was feeling "sick as a dog" at the time.
2. He figured the game was probably some "resident evil rip-off-survival-horror bunk"
3. He "actually researched the game to find out what it was"
4. He has an "erratic gaming career"
5. His pc took "8 minutes to load"
5. He played for "ten hours of total time"
6. He is "not a programmer"
7. He "spent so much time reprogramming this game"

Well now, i am not a reviewer, i'm just a poor simple gamer….and my G3 runs beautifully for hours on-end every other day without faults, without freezes, with captivating graphics, engrossing hidden storyline, emersive reputation build-up, knife-edge appreciation of quest failure reality, played for weeks and many more yet to come…such a pleasure.

Yes, it's hard to deny that. Although I'd say it always ran "OK" on my system — I was just looking to improve it further. I'd be surprised if Corwin played with the .ini file, for example (sorry if I'm wrong, mate ), so I don't think it's particularly necessary.

I found it interesting that he didn't list his computer specs. He says….

*quote*
"I have 2/3 of the recommended specs (memory and processor) and a more-than-minimum-but-less-than-recommended video card, so I figure I should be good to go" *end quote*

But he claims that it took him 8 minutes to load? I seriously doubt that.
When G3 first came out, I only had 1 gig of RAM at the time, and while it did indeed have some lengthy(by todays standards) load times, it was nowhere near 8 minutes. Even with the promo videos, it took 3 1\2 to 4 minutes max.
I think this guy is full of crap.

Actually, I did tweak one thing in the .ini file, the one where you add the extra 0 to some large number!! After that, you were all speaking modern Greek to me!! ( I actually have some understanding of ancient greek and latin!! )

He first needs a decent system. Maybe the components are 2/3 of the recommended specs, but good components doesn't make a good system. Assuming that the components are indeed as he says there are then they were either put together very shitty, or he messed up his whole computer with whatever.

90% of the memory leaks, savebugs, desktop crashes are caused by unstable systems and not by the game itself.

Originally Posted by Acleasius
Tens of Thousands would be my guess, especially since the most popular threads are Tweak, Bug and broken Quest based.

You only hear from people when someting goes wrong or the game crashes, doesn't run at all, etc. People who have no problems are happily playing the game (like me). I agree that tens of thousands is way too much, but a review like this doesn't make any sense.

Strange that I had zero problems with G3 - no crashes, no major bugs etc. My spec is X2 5000+, 7800GT, 1.5GB DDR. I've just finished it and while I can whine about some balancing and story aspect I don't see any technical problems almost everyone is talking about. Its a great game! Im 26 and all those reviewers around are probabely 15 yrs old retards from console world :/

whatever

He's also a liar. Look at the screenshoots that show the armor he's wearing after only 10 hours of play. Or how did he make it to the desert area after only 10 hours of play?. He really should have given the game back to his boss and told him he wasn't able to get the game to run and to give the assignment to someone else. But noooooooooo. He got a paycheck for his so called review of a game.

I think the shortest RPG I ever played lasted about 3 to 4 weeks (Gods Land of something something). But to review an RPG after only 3 nights of play not only shows the reviewer has no shame, but the web site has no credibility.

Originally Posted by Sem
90% of the memory leaks, savebugs, desktop crashes are caused by unstable systems and not by the game itself.

How odd ! I must be in that 10% it seems since I have a rather decent system:
(AMD FX55 ,2GB RAM, ATI X1900XT 512MB,2xWDRaptors in RAID 0,Audigy 2)
This is my gaming rig so I run things there pretty much in a vacuum (no antivirus,
stopped all unnecessary services, No internet connection and no Crap installed
except some media Players and games).

Let me also add that I have played a Lot of recent high-end games with zero
(and this is no manner of speech, I mean zero) stability problems and glitches
(i.e Oblivion, Spellforce 2, BFME II,FEAR,Prey,Quake4, HL2 EP1) Not to mention
older games that had their fair share of bugs but run surprisingly well there
(VTM:bloodlines,Arx Fatalis, Gothic2 Gold,spellforce1 etc).

So Imagine my surprise that after two months of constant patching I would still
not be able to play the game that I bought on release, without the LAA fix
by HiddenX (thanks man, works like a charm ) due to the game crashing every
30 mins or so with a memory heap error !. Ofcourse the game still crashes every
1-2 hours with a where's the Guru error, but I can play at least… Needless to
point out how badly this reflects on PB…

Ofcourse I had to stop playing again in the hopes that a Patch would come along
that actually fixes:
1) The broken skills (improve Robes, Magic staves,make poison etc…)
2)The Broken Quests, Quest dialog options appearing before the quest was
initiated, Quest related NPC's spawning beneath the world…
3)The horrible balance (useless armor, Attack rates of newbie level beasts,
NPCs that I can off in 3 swings near immortal vs beasts that off me in 2 bites !)..
Really, adjust some stats at the Least !!
4)Improve the not really working AI and the handling of some awkward
phenomena (like whole towns migrating and getting stuck in remote places as
mentioned in another thread) and perhaps remove that annoying limitation that
results in the monsters health replenishing itself when moving a few yards away
from It ?!… well I may be asking for a Lot now…

What I was trying to say, and please forgive me my rant, is that making useless
excuses of this sort does not change the Fact that :
a) As Dhruin has noted in his article, the game was release in a shameful state.
b) In spite of the very positive and expectant stance many of us (me included)
assumed from the start, our patience, as consumers buying a defective product,
has yet to be fully rewarded…

I trully hope (no I am sure after reading KaiRo's interview) that PB fully intends
to adress this mess more seriously in the future… They cant possibly hope that
the planned Addon will have any chance of Commercial success if they dont first
show a really significant measure of goodwill towards their paying customers, by
fixing things to an acceptable level… Hell that may even get them some good
reviews for a change

I don't understand how some people are claiming to be having so many crashes on otherwise trouble free systems.

The computer I have G3 installed on is a complete mess. It hasn't been reformatted in over 2 years, has a ton of crap running in the background(virus scanners, etc), and only has about 5% free space left on a very fragmented hard drive.

Originally Posted by JDR13
. . .
The computer I have G3 installed on is a complete mess. It hasn't been reformatted in over 2 years, has a ton of crap running in the background(virus scanners, etc), and only has about 5% free space left on a very fragmented hard drive. . . .